This man does not deserve to die. For he has spoken to us in the name of the LORD our God.
Jeremiah 26:16
Today, I saw the meme above in a tweet from, of all people, Elon Musk. It’s funny, but there’s a serious aspect about it that requires comment. And that’s the connection between the liberties historically enjoyed in the West and the Protestant Reformation. Specifically, I have in mind the relationship between the First Amendment guarantee of free speech in the Constitution of the United States of America and the Protestant Reformation.
Americans rightly believe that the right to free speech is one of the defining characteristics of our nation. It’s our birthright, given by God and guaranteed by our Constitution. But as is often the case, and I include myself here, it becomes easy to take our birthright for granted.
But in the past few years, beginning in 2018 and accelerating with the tyrannical Covid hoax in 2020, the ability of Americans, and of Westerners generally, has increasingly come under pressure.
I mention 2018 because it was in August of that year that the first big strike against free speech on the internet took place with the rapid-fire banning of Alex Jones and his Infowars website from nearly every major social media outlet. It gave every appearance of being a coordinated attack and was extensively covered in the press. I wrote about it myself in this space at that time. Worth noting is that Infowars has as its tagline, “There’s a war on for your mind.” That’s true, and it has always been true. And that war is fought with words and with propositions. If we believe the truth, we live. If we believe the many lies out there in the world, we perish.
In Romans, Paul tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. But what if people never hear the truth of the gospel. How can they believe? This was a major problem in the Middle Ages, ruled as it was in Europe by the Roman Church-State. Rome and her innovations such as the real presence of Christ in the mass blinded people to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Antichrist popes enforced the people’s blindness by torturing and murdering those who dared speak out against Rome’s evil system.
One might say it was Antichrist’s version of cancel culture.
Martin Luther as Hercules Germanicus by Hans Holbein, 1523. “In the picture, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Duns Scotus and Nicholas of Lyra already lay bludgeoned to death at his feet and the German inquisitor, Jacob van Hoogstraaten was about to receive his fatal stroke. Suspended from a ring in Luther’s nose was the figure of Pope Leo X,” The Reformation Room.
There is no other Head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.
Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 25.6
“I have no idea who Antichrist is.” I don’t remember anything else about the sermon. I don’t even recall the name of the man who preached it. But I do remember it was on a Sunday morning in December 2006 that I heard those words, “I have no idea who Antichrist is,” come from the pulpit of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
I case you’re wondering, no, it wasn’t D. James Kennedy who made that comment. It was a guest preacher, whose name escapes me.
It’s just as well I don’t recall the man’s name who uttered those words. For it seems to me that what he said that Sunday could well be said by most of the professing reformed church, both in 2006 and in 2021. No one, it seems, has any idea who Antichrist is.
It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma, to borrow a turn of phrase from Winston Churchill. Or at least that’s how it seems to most Christians today.
Protesters demonstrate Covid lockdowns in Australia, August 21, 2021.
Have I gone Covid crazy?
Sometimes I ask myself this question. There are, after all, a lot of things going on in the world. And it’s not as if Covid, more to the point, governmental overreaction to Covid, is the only problem Americans, and citizens of other nations, face.
In the summer of the Year of Our Lord 2021, Americans face threats from any number of directions. We have an imploding financial system, embarrassment on the world stage due to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Antifa, BLM, an illegitimate and senile President Joe Biden, a government determined to classify its political opponents as enemies of the state, wildfires, replacement migration for the purpose of electing a new people, Critical Race Theory running rampant in our schools, universities, government and corporations, a polarized electorate, and Rome making huge inroads in its influence on our government. I’m probably leaving some things off this list. But you get the point. America is drowning in problems to the point that our national survival is an open question.
So many things to write about. And yet, I find I just cannot let go of Covid.
Why is that?
One reason is that it’s constantly in the news. You can’t get very far in the day, whether you want to or not, without hearing about something Covid related.
A second reason, it’s one of, if not the most, blatant propaganda campaign I’ve ever seen. The lies, they truly are off the charts. Let’s just look at one lie, the many reports that it’s the unvaccinated who are filling up hospitals with serious cases of Covid. Just today, the Cincinnati Enquirer ran such a story titled “Doctors: Vaccines are keeping people alive.” The article tells us that it the unvaccinated who are ending up in the hospital. “According to state and federal data, vaccinated people account for less than 2% of the 19,000 Ohioans hospitalized with COVID-19 this year and less than 1% of the nearly 7,000 who died from the disease.”
Well, that pretty much settles it. Get the vax already! Or you’re gonna die a horrible death!, or kill grandma!, or something!
Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.
Acts 10:34
“My favorite book is the Bible, because it provides the blackprint for man’s salvation.”
The year was either 1989 or 1990, I don’t recall for certain which. After a year away from college, I had returned to the University of Cincinnati (UC) to finish my undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts in the fall of 1989 and would go on to finish the next year.
One day during the school year, my eye happened to catch a display in the lobby of Langsam Library, the university’s main library, with the title “My Favorite Book.” The display was in a glass enclosed case built into the wall. Every quarter – UC was on a quarter system in those days rather than the more common semester system – the display was changed. As it turned out, the “My Favorite Book” display for that quarter was collection of submissions by UC faculty members stating the title of their favorite book and the reason why.
Having a few minutes to spare, I walked over to the display to look it over. Somewhat surprised to see the Bible listed as a favorite, I read the card with the faculty member’s write up, which began with the quote at the top of this page. But it didn’t end there. After so many years, I do not recall the name or position of the faculty member or the exact wording of the rest of his write up on why the Bible was his favorite book. What I do recall, though, was the militant and angry tone he used. There was nothing in his paragraph on the Bible that sounded remotely Christian. Rather, the author ranted on as if he were some left over radical still stuck in the 1960’s. The author, who was apparently black, made it very clear that he did not like white people and used the Bible to justify his position.
Even though I wasn’t a Christian the time, I had grown up in church and knew something about the Bible, enough that I found the author’s use of the Scriptures to promote his clearly hard-core racial agenda deeply disturbing.
At about the same time, there was controversy on the UC campus concerning a few paragraphs in, if I recall correctly, the student handbook. It had been reported that there was language in the new version of the handbook that addressed race issues. The controversy, as I heard it, was over an alleged claim made in the handbook that blacks cannot be racist because they have no power. This claim bothered me as it conflicted with what I had learned growing up. I had always been taught that a “racist” was someone who hated another person based solely on his skin color. Under that definition, anyone, regardless of his background, could be racist. But here was a claim stating that blacks cannot be racist. Somewhat skeptical that any official publication of the University would make such a claim – given how rampant “woke” ideology is on today’s college campuses, I know my skepticism sounds naïve to readers in 2021 – I went and asked for a copy of said offending handbook to see what it said for myself. Sure enough, the report I’d heard was true. It was right there is black and white: blacks cannot be racist, because they have no power.
As had the “My Favorite Book” write up, the language in the handbook disturbed and perplexed me. Not only did the claim fly in the face of everything I had been taught and believed, but it seemed to imply that black people were special class of individuals who were eternally victims incapable of doing wrong, whereas white people, as it were, bore the mark of Cain, eternal victimizers who could do no right.
As I said earlier, at that time I was not a Christian, neither had I ever studied philosophy. Although I was bothered by the assertions I had come across in the two publications, the “My Favorite Book” write up on the Bible and the student handbook, I lacked the needed intellectual tools to analyze and refute them.
Although I didn’t know it at the time and wouldn’t come to realize it until twenty-five years or so later, the radical claims I had stumbled across were part of a new intellectual movement, so new that it had not even received a name until 1989, called Critical Race Theory.
Luther at the Diet of Worms, by Anton von Werner, 1877.
There is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a might man is not delivered by much strength.
Psalm 33:16
Watching the news. It’s hard to do these days.
I admit to following day to day events, politics, economics, and the like. It’s too much a part of me not to do so.
But it really isn’t a very enjoyable experience.
There’s simply no good news. Or at least many days it doesn’t seem like it.
As a reformed believer, I know well that God has decreed all things, whatsoever comes to pass. He doesn’t merely know in advance what’s going to take place, or passively allow it to happen. He actively brings about the events that occur, both in our own lives and on the scale of nations and of the world.
As much as I don’t like it, God decreed from all eternity that Joseph Robinette Biden would be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021. And his purposes in doing so are his own glory and the good of his people.
But even though a Biden presidency is for our ultimate good as Christians, this does not mean that it is going to be a pleasant experience.
Scripture does not teach a foolish optimism where we’re expected to treat disasters as if they were manna from heaven. It’s okay to call a disaster a disaster an mourn over it. As the Author of Hebrews tells us, “Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful.”
Jeremiah wept at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. If it was not wrong for them to grieve, it is not wrong for us to grieve the enormous disaster that has befallen our nation.
And yet, there comes a time when grieving must end, and work must begin. We, all of us, have suffered difficulty and disappointment in our lives. There is a time for grieving, and a time to cease grieving.
Joe Biden is in a position to do a lot of damage to this nation. As Christians, we have a responsibility to speak out against his evil policies, to refute them from the Word of God and, if possible, to prevent them from being enacted. We have a responsibility to preach the Gospel of Christ, that perhaps some who don’t know him may hear and be saved. We have a responsibility to protect and provide for our families, both our natural family and our brothers and sisters in Christ.
How do we do this? Do we look to ourselves, to our inner strength? As the hymn goes, the arm of flesh will fail you, you dare not trust your own.
No. It is to Christ we must look if we are going to find the knowledge, wisdom, and strength to not just to survive, but to triumph in these dark times.
This brings me to the lesson from Luther which I’d like to discuss.
Luther at the Diet of Worms, by Anton von Werner, 1877.
And it cast down truth to the ground; and it practised, and prospered.
Daniel 8:12
Truth is cast to the ground.
I’ve thought about that quite a lot in recent years. It seems as if the lie always prospers, while truth, it if even is heard at all, is quickly dismissed as nonsense and those who speak it as fools or worse.
I was reminded once again of just how corrupt things have become after watching some of the shenanigans in the stock market last week with the big dust up over the Gamestop stock and how, supposedly, a group of small investors beat the big guys on Wall Street.
I’ll not dive into the details of what took place, but on the surface we can say that at least one major hedge fund sustained significant losses when its short position on Gamestock was blown up by investors piling into the company’s stock and driving it to over $400 per share.
For our purposes, what important to understand is that when an investor – either an individual or an institution such as a hedge fund – short sells a stock, he profits when the price goes down. If the price goes up, the short seller loses money. If the stock price goes way up, as was the case with Gamestop, the short seller loses a lot of money.
When the losses were piling up for the big guys during the week, it didn’t take long for the weeping and gnashing of teeth to begin. Billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman went on an epic rant on CNBC last Thursday, 1/28, saying, “The reason the market is doing what it’s doing is people are sitting at home getting checks from the government. This fair share, is a (bleep) concept. It’s just a way of attacking wealthy people and I think it inappropriate and we all gotta work together and pull together.”
Just how true is the narrative that a bunch of unemployed Robin Hood traders on their own drove up the price of Gamestop, thus inflicting heavy losses on some hedge funds, I cannot say for sure. I have my doubts that things are what we’re being told, but, at the very least, Cooperman seemed to accept that narrative when he went on his rant last week.
Pharaoh decrees the drowning of every new male offspring among the Israelites by Michiel van der Borch, 1332.
By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s command.
Hebrews 11:23
We Christians in the West have been singularly blessed in that we have rarely been faced with the option of either obeying God or our governors. For the most part, the laws of the state have not required us to violate our consciences.
But that period of relative peace seems to be drawing to a close.
In the next few years, it is very likely Christians in America and elsewhere in the formerly free West will be faced with a choice either of obeying the civil authorities or God.
This will come as a new and strange experience for most of us. In my own life, I’ve not found myself in such a position. Ideally, this should be the case. Civil magistrates, if they are properly doing their jobs, will seek to pass laws that are in accord with the law of God. The Bible tells us that one of the two legitimate functions of civil government is to “praise the good,” by which is meant pass laws that are in accord with God’s law. If men violate these laws, they are to be punished. This leads to the other legitimate function of civil government, punishing those who practice evil by breaking those laws.
Perhaps in part because Christians in the West have, for the most part, not had to face the choice of either obeying the civil magistrate or God, many Western Christians are uncomfortable with talk of civil disobedience. “That’s the stuff of Marxists and radicals,” they may say. “After all, it says right there in Romans 13, ‘Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.’ That settles the matter.”
This argument carries a lot of weight with Christians. It certainly seems convincing, at least if we take this passage in isolation. Christians, it appears, must without question always obey the government in all things everywhere no matter what. And if Christians do not obey all governmental edicts to the letter, they get what they have coming to them when they are punished by the civil authorities.
I have no doubt but that most ordinary Christians who hold this position are sincere in what they say. They want to be law abiding citizens. But if we follow out this form of thinking to its ultimate conclusion, we find that the practical effect of their stance – Christians must always obey the government in whatever it says – is some form of tyranny, where right an wrong are determined by the will of the leader. Put another way, Christians who hold this position are unknowingly endorsing the fuhererprinzip, the leadership principle, where whatever the leader says goes.
But the fuhererprinzip is not Christian. Christians are not called to blindly follow government edicts, but to compare what their civil magistrates are saying with the Scriptures. The Christian idea of judging the statements of civil magistrates, and all others for that matter, by the Scriptures is known, not as the fuhererprinzip, but the Schriftprinzip, or the writing principle.
In his essay “Christ and Civilization,” John Robbins provides several quotes from Martin Luther on the Schriftprinzip.
We intend to glory in nothing but Holy Scripture, and we are certain that the Holy Spirit cannot oppose and contradict himself.
I have learned to hold only the Holy Scripture inerrant. All other writings I so read that, however learned or holy they may be, I do not hold what they teach to be true unless they prove by Scripture or reason that it must be so.
Putting aside all human writings, we should spend all the more and all the more persistent labor on Holy Scriptures alone…. Or tell me, if you can, who is the final judge when statements of the fathers contradict themselves? In this event the judgment of Scripture must decide the issue, which cannot be done if we do not give Scripture the first place…so that it [the Bible] is in itself the most certain, most easily understood, most plain, is its own interpreter, approving, judging, and illuminating all the statements of all men…. Therefore nothing except the divine words are to be the first principles for Christians; all human words are conclusions drawn from them and must be brought back to them and approved by them.
Scripture itself…alone is the fount of all wisdom.
And even in the writings of the fathers we should accept nothing that does not agree with Scripture. Scripture alone must remain the judge and master of all books.
Now if what Luther said is true, and it is, then this implies that Christians have, not only the right, but the duty before God, to compare what their civil magistrate is saying with the Scriptures. And if it is found that the laws of the state require what Scripture forbids, or forbid what Scripture requires, then they are bound to obey God rather than men.
But not only is civil disobedience an implication of the Scriptures, there are many examples in Scripture of believers resisting tyrannical edicts of civil magistrates. And these individuals, far from being censured by the Word of God, are praised for the stances they took.
With this in mind, let’s look at some of these examples of resistance to tyranny in the Bible.
When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal.
2 Kings 11:1
As of this writing in early September 2020, Americans find themselves faced with another presidential election in just two short months. As is the American custom, much ink has been spilled over the past year concerning the November election. In reality, the spilling of ink began much earlier. With so much election commentary out there, surely, it would seem, there’s nothing more this author could add to the mix that hasn’t already been discussed thousands of times and by people much better qualified.
But this would be a mistake.
There is one topic, and a significant one to be sure, that, on the one hand, is a prominent feature of the 2020 presidential election but, on the other hand, has received hardly any commentary at all.
Lux Lucet 